Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Another nail in the HD-DVD coffin...

There is still competition. Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, and a bunch of others may BD players. The mass adoption of one format will encourage people to buy these players and will reduce the price. That's how EVERY electronic device I've ever owned worked. My first DVD player was $600+ if I recall. First plasma's were $10K+, etc etc. Prices will come down because of mass production/adoption.

Blu-ray Lawsuit vs Samsung
by Wayde Robson — last modified February 14, 2008 06:12

A consumer group charges that Samsung has knowingly sold defective Blu-ray players since June 2006 and is looking for $5 million in compensation.

Samsung sold lead plaintiff Bob McGovern a BD-P1200 last summer which has turned out to be incompatible with some Blu-ray disc titles. The plaintiff attributes the player's inability to playback Blu-ray movies to a "defective design and/or manufacture".

Attorneys have noted that the problems have caused many complaints against Samsung and other Blu-ray manufacturers. According to the suit, Samsung has verified that it doesn’t intend to provide any further firmware updates to fix this issue.

A few specific Blu-ray titles are known to have problems in various players (especially Samsung’s BD-P1000 and BD-P1200) including: The Day After Tomorrow and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Many Blu-ray players require regular firmware updates to make them compatible with newer Blu-ray discs.

It’ll come as a surprise to many consumers that simply taking home a Blu-ray player doesn’t mean you can start watching Blu-ray movies. A series of firmware updates are necessary to make the player compatible with newer movies. But what happens when the manufacturer refuses to provide firmware for new movie discs? You get a class action lawsuit against Samsung.

The trouble is probably related to BD+, the DRM (Digital Rights Management) intended to guard against copy protection. Silver Surfer uses a Blu-ray java virtual machine to add BD+ copy protection which is unique to Blu-ray. BD+ is an additional layer of copy protection on top of AACS copy protection already used by both competing formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD.

So has anyone heard when NetFlix will start selling their stock of HD-DVD discs?

I was checking eBay, but the people trying to jump ship still aren't quite at the bargain basement price that I am looking for. There were a couple of folks that managed to sell their HD-A2 with about 15 movies for about $250, but to me, that is a loss on their part. I have 16 movies and the A2 and no plans to jump ship.

Not players, the media (the movies themselves.)
The cost of the player is really insignificant relative to the cost of media.
I am format neutral from last year. Between the BD30 and AS35, I have about $725 into the pair.
Though its only been a few months, the library has 15 HD-DVDs and 21 Blu-rays.

Even at a say a low price of $20 each (which is NOT what I paid ), that represents $720. So in just a few months of ownership, the media itself as basically equaled the cost of the players.

To build another analogy, lets look at DVDs. Lets say you have about 300. Even at a low ball price of say $7.50 each, that is a $3600 investment. That makes the cost of any DVD player (even say a high dollar unit) really pale in comparison.

With the format war, the consortiums were funding incentives to the consumers. Now there is no format war. There is no need for the consortium to offer incentives. Can;t remember a BOGO since the announcement (other than to clear titles not moving). I had someone say well its after Xmas, did you really expect them? I said yes, why not, I was gettting BOGOs back inAug last year.
I hope I am wrong, but,,,,,,,

Well lets look at the math on your scenario. Lets say you are 3 at a time user through Netflix at a rate of $17/month.
That equates to $204 annually. Add 5 purchased movies a year at $20.00 each, so another $100 annually.

So $304 annually. Within 2 years you are roughly at the same amount as buying the 2 players to be format neutral.

Another scenario, lets say you are a 4 at a time user at 24 monthly, and that you will only purchase 5 movies ever.
Within 2 years you are at $676. That's real close to the purchase price of 2 players to be format neutral.

...but how many movies do you really watch multiple times?